Nugent leaves lasting legacy in 20 years as Manteno mayor

MANTENO – Tim Nugent has lived nearly his entire life in Manteno – save for eight years spent in Kankakee when he was that city’s police chief from 1985-93.

He’s Manteno through and through.

Nugent, 72, walked away from his mayor’s post of 20 years on Monday, leaving a lasting legacy of turning the small village into a vibrant community that is the envy of many similar-sized communities in Illinois.

Some opponents might debate the Manteno he left, but the projects and upgrades Nugent helped guide and establish in the northern Kankakee County village are remarkably unmatched.

“Over the course of time and because we were there for 20 years, we were able to do a lot of sustained stuff,” he said. “The problem with politics and terms, you get in for four years and it takes a long time to plan something, and then a long time to execute something.”

Nugent said he was fortunate to be able to serve as mayor for five terms, and his administration was able to get a lot accomplished in two decades. It wasn’t easy when he took over as mayor in 2005.

“We had a broken water system,” he said. “Our sewer system was maxed out. Our schools were overcrowded, and growth was a problem.”

After studying the options to fix the water system, Nugent said the village decided to sell it to Aqua Illinois for $4.5 million in 2007.

He said selling to Aqua was a favorable deal because it would’ve cost the village $25 million to build its own water filtration plant to meet the expected growth.

“Our water bills would more than likely be even higher today if we still owned it, but that’s the path that you didn’t take, that people don’t know,” Nugent said.

Influx of cash

Flush with the $4.5 million from the Aqua deal, the village turned to improving its streetscape, appearance and infrastructure. Manteno put that seed money to good use.

“If we sold an asset, we were going to turn it into an asset,” Nugent said.

One of the first things Nugent decided to do was start a beautification program for the village, as they planted trees along Main Street and purchased the adjacent parking lots from Canadian National Railway.

“We created the Main Street plaza and all the different street lighting to beautify the downtown,” he said.

The village responded well to those efforts, and it jump-started the revitalization.

“The empty businesses that were on Main Street started filling up,” he said. “We said, ‘Hey, we’re starting to see some results here. Maybe we’re on to something,’ and we need to keep expanding that.”

In 2008, the village hired Hitchcock Design Group, of Naperville, to come up with a plan to enhance the entire downtown area.

Hitchcock came up with what is now the Square on Second, which required buying five houses on Second Street in what became a multiyear project.

“We had a lot of public meetings about ‘What do we want to see downtown?’” Nugent said.

It was a collaborative effort to decide what attractions would work best for the Square on Second.

Another term …

Nugent’s first term led to second and third terms, as the village was picking up momentum turning Manteno into a destination. Manteno grew from a population of 6,414 in 2000 to 9,214 in 2010.

“We were able to stay there, and we were able to then continue on and do the Square on Second and plan all that and pay for it with the money we had gotten from Aqua,” Nugent said.

Nugent said the village maintained a good relationship with Aqua and turned to the company again when the wastewater plant was nearing the end of its lifecycle. The facility was going to need a multimillion dollar upgrade.

Manteno sold its wastewater plant to Aqua for a whopping $25 million in 2017. The village used the proceeds from that sale to continue with building more assets. The village kept that money in the bank and waited until interest rates increased after three years to let the windfall grow.

The village started to rebate homeowners local property taxes, paying for their garbage fees and setting sights on how to further improve the village and addressing its most pressing needs. It turned its focus on upgrading the police department and public works facilities which had outgrown their current buildings.

In 2022, the village purchased the former Municipal Bank building at 110 Marquette Place South for $1.65 million and renovated it into a state-of-the-art police station that opened in the summer of 2023.

The renovation cost $1.5 million. It was estimated that to build a new building from the ground up would’ve been in the $6 million range.

The public works department moved from its old building at 700 S. Oak St. to a brand new facility on North Maple Street across from Legacy Park in 2023. The village purchased 10 acres for the new, 45,000-square-foot public works facility, and the total project cost $7 million.

Legacy Park was also developed with the Aqua sale money, and it’s home for the Manteno Wildcats football program, an outdoor hockey rink and a soon-to-to-be completed fishing pond. Legacy Park was also developed in conjunction with Manteno Township.

All of these upgrades were completed during Nugent’s 20 years as mayor.

“We bought all those facilities with proceeds that we had gotten from different asset sales,” he said. “We’ve still got about $15-$16 million left.”

Schools upgrade

Nugent’s administration was also instrumental in helping the Manteno School District improve its facilities.

The school district had failed on a few referendums to gain the needed money to address the growth, because the public sentiment was the district wasn’t spending money wisely.

Early in his tenure, Nugent worked with then school Superintendent Dawn Russert to get the referendum passed. They had to change the public perception by having a third party audit of the schools. Nugent met with local developers who committed $75,000 to pay for the independent audit.

The auditors spent a month at the school going over everything about its operations. The auditor’s report basically revealed the school district was operating very lean and was one of the more economical districts in the state, Nugent said.

The school district used the report as a marketing tool to have another referendum, which passed.

“That’s what got the school district enough money to add on to the middle school and to the high school,” Nugent said. “... We came up with a plan on how [to change the perception], and Dawn was a great partner.”

Vocal opposition

In 2023 when Nugent worked with the state of Illinois to bring the Gotion lithium battery factory to Manteno, he had no idea there would be such a big pushback against the China-based manufacturer.

“My focus was bringing in a company with jobs, and that was going to invest a lot of capital and a lot of money into the community,” he said. “They had been brought to us by the state, and they were actually looking at a number of different locations. When we first started, I thought Manteno’s chances of getting that was pretty much slim to none.”

Nugent said companies had looked at sites in Manteno hundreds of times, but they mostly went elsewhere. Gotion chose the Manteno site over several others.

“The whole Chinese communist stuff, I didn’t envision that being nearly the political firestorm that it turned out to be,” he said. “A good portion of that was a lot of national politics involved. There’s a lot of people that are anti electric vehicle. ... They’re anti something, and this checked a lot of boxes for them.”

He added that a lot of people from the suburbs of Chicago have moved to Manteno to escape similar issues.

“They were afraid that this was going to cause issues like that, where they came, where they got away from,” Nugent said. “I think there’s a lot of prejudices there. I think fear is a big motivator. ... The anti people used all the fear mongering that they could to build up their steam, and it worked.”

Moving forward

Nugent will continue to live in Manteno as his grandkids live there. He also knew when he was elected for his fifth term, that was going to be his last.

“It’s a different town today than it was 20 years ago, and I think 95% of that is positive,” he said.

Nugent admits that he couldn’t envision the last 18 months of his mayoral run would be as crazy, wild and negative as it was. He received several death threats via anonymous letters and phone calls over the Gotion plant.

“You can disagree all day long, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said. “It’s the nastiness, the degrading and you know threatening your life, ... threatening your kids, threatening your grandkids. That’s what I don’t understand. ... That’s unsettling because no public official should have to go through that.”